Investors: Don’t Fall Victim to the Biggest Scam in Real Estate

I’m sick and tired of constantly seeing fake gurus out there trying to sell courses, DVDs, seminars. It doesn’t work, and this is why. Have you ever asked yourself, “Why the hell is someone charging to teach me how to do it if they can just go out and do it themselves?”

If you’re sick, what do you do? You go to the doctor, and the doctor gets you better. If your car breaks down, what do you do? You take it to the mechanic, and the mechanic fixes your car. You don’t go out and buy a seminar or attend a seminar on how to fix your car. You also don’t go out and buy a book on how to cure your health.

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Finding a Mentor

Now, if you want to learn how to make money in real estate, you have to go and find a mentor. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to pay for a mentor. When I started my journey as a real estate investor, I hustled my way to someone who’s got a $150 million company right now. I called him and cold emailed him and begged him for six months before he took me under his wing and I got a job with him. And he pretty much taught me the foundations for being the real estate investor that I am today.

Don’t Fall for TV Celebrity Gurus

You guys are getting sucked into these seminars and buying these courses and DVDs because of what you’re seeing on TV. Some of these folks have created credibility from their TV shows, even though a lot of those TV shows are fake. Ninety percent of them are fake—the figures are fake, and they make it look much easier than it is. I’m begging you—go work with someone who’s doing it every single day. Maybe they don’t necessarily want to teach it because they’re making so much money doing it. But if you offer them value, you might just land a gig that will help set the stage for your investing career.

Have you purchased any courses, DVDs, seminars, etc.? What has your experience been?

Let me know your thoughts with a comment!

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About Author

Engelo Rumora, the Real Estate Dingo and your favorite Australian, quit school at the age of 14 and played professional soccer at the age of 18. From there, he began to invest in real estate. He now owns real estate all over the world and has bought, renovated, and sold over 500 properties. He is currently in the process of launching an ICO that will “Decentralize The Real Estate Industry.” He’s also known for giving houses away to people in need and his crazy videos on YouTube. His life’s mission is to be remembered as someone who gave it his all and gave it all away.

Good article. Salesmen come in all flavors……some sell stuff, some sell solutions to problems and some sell themselves as both, without being either=The art of self promotion. In legal terms…..a con artist.

I was questioning the same thing and valid point about reverse psychology. Not many successful investors are willing to mentor anyone from FREE especially if their mindset is “I don’t want to train my competition.

Many times, I see the blind leading the blind at the meetup groups and REIAs.

With that said, I challenge anyone to go to a live foreclosure auction find the cash investors bidding on and buying properties (at the auction) and ask if those investors will mentor for free. I am curious to hear how that goes.

The fact is that not many will work longer or harder than I so I always end up winning.

I’ve had many employees that have worked for my company, learned a tonne from me. Then left abruptly to start their own thing.

Here I am and most most of them are back to their shitty little lives and haven’t done anything significant with the experience that I passed on to them.

So teaching someone for “free” and being worried that they will be your competition hasn’t been an issue for me.

I’ve had way to many people ask me for something but never really willing to give anything in return. Even ifn this instance, if only they where a bit more persistent with following up, maybe they would have caught my attention.

Nothing beats hard work and if you bang the door hard enough, someone will open it.

Now, I’m composing a consulting tab on my site that is going to be so bloody expensive just so no one bothers me anymore lol

You should never stop learning, but you should know education is the last great scam, and not just in real estate. It’s an amorphous product. Students don’t know what they’re supposed to know and don’t know when they’re shortchanged. That and nontraditional education is about as unregulated as it gets.

Forget real estate for a moment. Is it wise to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a computer science degree if you haven’t yet taken a free Khan Academy course to determine if you both enjoy coding and have an aptitude for it?

There’s other education Mills that are factories, helping you increase your credit limit to pay for their training.

I’ll draw a line in the sand. Education that costs over $997 in practical terms can’t deliver the proportional valiue. A person can only learn so fast and around $997 is about all you can learn in a few months. Maybe $497 is the break point. My point is that the $25k Fortune builders 3 day weekends can not deliver proportional value, yoiu can’t learn 25 times faster in their education vs the $997 guys 3 day training.

BUT there’s lots of folks selling $97 things and I buy a lot of them to reverse engineer and pull the valuable one liners from. One of my favorite good guys selling small $$ amount education is Mark Walters, but there’s many many good folks selling really good content!

Then there’s the national level educators: Dykes Boddiford, Pete Fortunato and a few others who’s intelligence and content is heads and shoulders and often unique so I travel for their education.

Engelo I respect what you are saying, 100% agree, but as one who as made it as well, but via the local REIA, local “doers” path plus paying for knowledge here and there I know that what you said sounds black and white but I view the reality (and I bet you agree) that REI education is a shades of grey reality.

I like Tai Lopez (51 steps guy) who said be the 30 yr old driving the nice car, not the old guy driving the nice car. Because most folks who become successful by making all the mistakes first hand take till they are old to finanally have made it. (dove tailing into Engelo’s comment) Learn from others so you can accelerate your success. My input is, that its not always via pay them nothing mentors. These opportunities are very rare, even in large REIAs. IE I can’t take anyone on as a student (free or they pay, neither) so if I can’t who can? There’s few who can. Fortunately I hear of a few who do. I also hear of a few of those mentors taking advantage of the students!

My tips are:

– Joine ALL of the local REIAs even if you have to drive 2 hrs each way.
– Go to all the REI groups and over time figure out who is really doing deals.
– click on those ads offering REIA training systems. Buy a few. Study them and not just put them on the shelf.
– Always be reading REI books. A book a month at least!!!!!
– Get on a bunch of education sellers mailing lists. Watch their videos, watch their live presentations. You will learn something for free.
– I under represented struggling to do your own deals in this list. Every other bullet should be struggle daily at lead gen, talking to sellers, driving for dollars, calc MAO, signing contracts, canceling contracts, a few will make money. Learn a long the way.

Curt, I don’t know you, but some advice……I’m 68, built five companies and now fully retired with some investment properties in my portfolio, so I feel I can tell you without holding back…..you are chasing a $5 with a $20. I don’t know what value you put your time at, but all the hours you pledge to ‘improving’ your performance might be better spent actually doing battle to get ahead.

Successful people make mistakes…lots of them. Unsuccessful….they take what they see as shortcuts. The differentiating factor between failure and success is to take mistakes and turn them into success by moving forward. Successful people immerse themselves in making things happen, not reading/driving and not listening to others that don’t work for them or who don’t have any skin in your success. This creates your good instincts….not reading, or taking another person’s success map as your own…it’s not a shortcut…and most shortcuts turn out to not be shortcuts in the end. You deserve good luck if you want it, but you must do the heavy lifting to get it.

Your advice to travel for Dykes Boddiford and Pete Fortunato is great! The person who mentored my mentor advised me to go to a Dykes Boddiford seminar. Worth the travel to another state & spend a weekend learning.

One thing I would add to your advice is that not only should one educate themselves they need to act on that education. Knowledge is power, but without action it is nothing.

You pose a fair question: “Why the hell is someone charging to teach me how to do it if they can just go out and do it themselves?”

The answer is simple if you have ever attended a highly marketed Real Estate Guru Conference, example Ron Legrand.

If you were Ron Legrand what would you rather do, visit a dozen prospective fix and flips homes, submit offers and counters offers, come to an agreement, go under contract, close, repair the property and then list it and wait for it to be sold and closed to receive a check amounting to maybe $15,000 – $30,000 in profits three to six months later?

Or, how about addressing 300 – 500 hungry attendees at a highly promoted conference, perform your platform sale’s pitch and see a $1,999 – $3,999 Course sold to 50 – 100 eager buyers who rush to the back of the conference room with credit cards in hand? The math tells the story.

Also bear in mind that if Ron Legrand couldn’t come up with one single success testimonial he probably wouldn’t succeed just as a Las Vegas Casino must have some slot machines pay off some of the time, Real Estate Gurus must have occasional winners and they do. I was one of them.

Where the element of “honesty” is lacking isn’t always exclusively attributable to the alleged Circus Barker, Snake Oil salesman Real Estate Guru, rather it’s the purchaser who in his/her heart of hearts knows he/she may diligently study the Course but won’t put in the actual time necessary to succeed, making a lot of phone calls and visiting a lot of properties..

I think a good analogy is a fitness gym where the majority of people who join know they will never fulfil an intense, time consuming workout regimentation. They know from the beginning they may show up a time or two but will soon quit and place blame of everyone and everything except themselves.

Fitness gyms know this dynamic well and exploit it to the hilt. Can you imagine every single member of a fitness gym showing up on a Friday evening to work out? The line would wrap around the building and the parking lot would be overflowing. People inside the gym would be waiting perhaps for hours to use a particular machine.

At least a Guru’s real estate course has no such physical limitations.

That being said I absolutely agree that a having a Mentor is a better way to approach the real estate business because a competent, professional Mentor will hound you like a Drill Sergeant or personal fitness coach whose motto is “No pain no gain”.

However, if we eliminate the Mentors who charge a fee, and the industry seems to be flooded with them, there are few Mentors remaining and willing to do it for free.

Why would someone successful in real estate where every minute counts and can be used for another deal, another listing, another sale etc. want to have you tag along asking questions that only slow the Mentor down?

The only answer I can come up with is, “Money”. The Mentor will want to charge you money or receive money from another avenue, e.g. TV rights like Million Dollar Listing and any of the numerous Fix and Flip shows that crowd the screen.

I truly wish this ethereal Mentor altruism existed but I guess I have done too many real estate deals and witnessed too many players all seeking the d=same thing, i.e. a maximum paycheck for minimal time invested.

This is why Internet Courses or so popular now, people want to believe they can stay home and masterfully flick a few computer keys to effortlessly buy and flip properties for big profits.

Believe me, the physical fitness industry is green with envy that it too cannot come up with an Internet stay-at-home workout product.

@Daryl LOL great comment! I find that I don’t cover the full scope of my thoughts when I start typing. I would have included your tact of fire-ready-aim-fire-recalibrate-fire again -success- do it some more-etc.

I’m not an example of this good advice! LOL as such I quit my day job later in life thanks to real estate but I had all the tools had I just jumped in and did it learning a long the way. Yes mentors accellerate and save on expensive mistakes.

Another side topic is: how to choose a mentor, a coach, a pay for course? The premise here IMHO should be the core criteria: does the teacher DO what they are teaching in the immediate preceding month? How many per year. Only move forward if they are doing what they teach. This one criteria would get folks much higher quality help. Tnx Engelo for the intriging blog title!! LOL

“The premise here IMHO should be the core criteria: does the teacher DO what they are teaching in the immediate preceding month? How many per year. Only move forward if they are doing what they teach. This one criteria would get folks much higher quality help.”

Sure someone with real depth of real estate experience to turn to at critical times would always be very helpful to just about anyone, but that is not what these programs / groups are “selling” (emphasis added). What they are pushing is about 95% hand holding and emotional coddling, and 5% (if that) real substance which begs the following question.

If you need someone like one of these organizations to perform this specific function for you (i.e., to assist you in baby stepping through your comfort zone), what chance do you really think you will be successful in a field that requires an immense amount of grit, drive, self starter initiative, unrelenting perseverance and the willingness to assume individual risk, this on nearly a daily basis.

Christopher, you clearly have your head in the game. There are several key traits, some of which you’ve nailed down, that are key requirements for being a successful entrepreneur. The industry chosen is immaterial to success, it’s the fabric of the person that matters. I’ve always defined an entrepreneur as someone who clearly has problems working for someone else, has an actual talent for making business happen, and is capable of drinking out of a fire-hose while chewing on ground glass at the same time.

One of the greatest lies we tell ourselves and our children is that anyone can be anything they want if they only put their mind to it and work hard. No they can’t, and neither can any of us. Just because you have the talent to sing in a rock band doesn’t mean you can sing opera, no matter how much training you’re willing to pay for.

Great advice. I’ve been a sucker for a couple of seminars, etc. Even in the past week before finding BP, I have been marketed to by a company wanting me to go in $10K for education/networking. I’d much rather start here, particularly given that I initially contacted the person on a Meetup without realizing what would ensue.

Good to Great. Strengths Finder. First Break all the Rules. All 3 should be at your library. These will help you define you, how you kick the can down the road…..and how you don’t. Knowing yourself before learning how to do ‘things’ will advance you in ways nothing else will. If you read these and subsequently feel you are on the right track to your own successes, you’ll get there with minimal training and mentoring. You will have identified the ‘right stuff’ for what you want to do.

I think education is valuable – but only from those who have a proven track record, and *generally* not from those mass-marketing their education.

These seminars are a complete joke, 100% agree with you Engelo. I have clients that literally spend $40k-$80k for a “blueprint” to help them syndicate deals, flip houses, etc.

I have to be the bearer of bad news and inform them that such education is NOT tax deductible if incurred prior to their own business starting up. That’s generally a shocker.

That said, I do spend about $30k per year on business coaches. I consider them my “board of advisors” and they all have significant successful business experience. This is key for me because I’m only 26, trying to grow a business, and manage 5-6 employees. I don’t have decades of experience so my coaches help to lessen the learning curve and avoid pitfalls.

I never felt the need for a mentor, paid or otherwise. Information is everywhere. Everything an investor needs to know is on this website, in the podcasts, and of course, through personal experience once he or she gets started.

I really thank you guys…I do hear you all and respect you too as successful people or on their way to being succeful, because I am 21. You are all my elders. Am a smart worker and persistent one. I don’t know the word “hard working” because I have not yet chosen the real path to follow and work harder for it….few months I thought of REI, and I worked the way I could and finded this website…now, am with you brothers….my country is a quick developing country, and I know in few years someone with real estates will get rich from it. So, I want to know, how to start REI when you don’t even have 20$ in your pocket, but I have a good working mind…but it needs your knowledge power to supply it and start working.

Recent licensed agent in NC and I am interested in RE investing and learning how to find the funding for these flips, rentals, etc. I was thinking of going to the Than Merrill seminar but it sounds like a total waste of my time when the resources are available to me online. My background is in business and am taking a break to get this business started. Any thoughts on info for funding and input on seminar.

I’ve been to one or two of these, and you won’t miss much. They are glorified pep rallies all directed at selling you hand holding services. Essentially nothing of substance is addressed other than the promise you will get something of real value if you just keep purchasing the more advanced elements of their program.

These meetings have been deftly tailored to put you in a state where you will turn of your rational thinking mind and get caught up in the imagery (or should I say illusion) of being a successful real estate magnate. The great irony is if you need all the upfront emotional coddling they offer you have almost no chance of being successful in an endeavor that requires you to be able solidly stand on your own two feet without baby stepping assistance.

Thank you Christopher for the honesty. Based on your experience, where should I begin? I am familiar with locating foreclosures but I need help with completing the deals and acquiring financing, etc. Can you recommend where you would start if you were me and know what you know now???

I guess all I can tell you is how I began. First, I am only in the Rental Business and I don’t flip properties (at least not so far). My first property was the accidental landlord thing, moved because of a job change and didn’t want to sell my home. It worked out reasonably well, but again it was just one property.

Then 2009 hit with the housing crises and there were properties galore at 65% plus discount from their last selling price. I live outside Silicon Valley so I started buying up properties during the 2009 to 2013 time frame. It was then I needed to get really serious about managing properties because by then I had a number of them.

So my approach was very passive in the beginning just learning as I went but without much real focus, and then it accelerated very rapidly after I acquired a whole portfolio of properties. As I indicated before, I went to a couple of the standard “sales” seminars in the beginning (pretty much totally worthless stuff), and I realized very quickly I was going to needed to educate myself if I was going to learn this business.

I started by reading quality books on the subject of acquisition and management of rental properties (Bigger Pockets members can give you many recommendations here – see Brandon Turner’s list – some of which he has written himself). Although I work full time outside my real estate activities, I was able to find enough time to read a book every two weeks. So it was mostly just taking the self initiative to learn from others, I mean really credible folks now not ultra cheesy self declared TV RE Gurus. This would include for instance Bigger Pockets contributors either through the articles or the blogs. And finally and perhaps most importantly actually learning on the job dealing with my own portfolio or properties.

Bottom line, I’m still learning and reading now, it never really ends. You can always improve your efficiency (i.e., your profitability) no matter how long you have been doing this. It’s really up to you to find the self starter within yourself. Once you really get going with true dedication, doors will start to open, just walk through them and don’t stop.

The best form of investment would always be education. Educating oneself and training oneself does not mean that you should just read this and read that. Educating and training oneself means that you should put yourself through a real estate training course. The best way to learn a trade is to learn from the ones who are certified to teach that specific trade. Being a real estate investor involves a lot of money which we do not want to waste and hand it over to the sad fate of loss. Save yourself the loss and invest in a real estate training course where you will learn the basics all the way to the specifics.

To play devil’s advocate, why wouldn’t an investor want to teach instead of doing deals all day long, when they can make as much (or more) money running seminars than being out in the field?

Furthermore, some people actually enjoy teaching.

I am not trying to defend gurus, as I feel similarly — about the bad ones. But, I know successful investors in my local area who swear by some of them. One in particular is a member of more than one mastermind group (thousands of dollars annually) and he says it’s well worth it.

Another local investor speaks very highly of Ron LeGrand. This one in particular was mentored by him and, as a result, became extremely successful in the span of about 3 years. This investor cash flows ~100k per month.

I am getting ready to attend the 4-day “quick start” class offered by LeGrand. I am not paying for the class. Being negatively biased towards gurus beforehand, I feel like I should be able to offer a good perspective on how I view the value from this class, so I’ll report back later if interested.

I don’t want to paint with to broad a brush here recognizing that there may be some legitimate folks out there teaching real estate classes, but let me relay a “confession” I listened to once from an individual that use to run these classes for a real estate outfit.

The reason I was told this story is that I mentioned to this individual that I was considering attending one of the road shows put on by one of the more popular outfits. As noted, this individual had been an organizer for a similar real estate outfit and he asked me a few background items about myself and he told me, “don’t go, you will be just wasting your time” and this is why as he explained it to me (his words to follow).

“These outfits are looking primarily for truly sad sacks who have failed at most everything they have done in life and are absolutely desperate to turn their fortunes around. They are typically uneducated folks (high school or some minimal college attendance), are very easily manipulated, and will do nearly anything the sponsor tells them to do (e.g., pay big money for routing information that can be had in books at only a nominal cost or sometimes on the internet for nothing) for just a chance to hit it big.

Its all about emotionally motivating these types, not by conveying valuable proprietary information, but rather through psychological gamesmanship and posturing, giving these unfortunates a vision of what they can be if they just faithfully carry out all the sponsor’s instructions. In other words, giving hope to the hapless. Kind of a like a used car salesman conducting a high school pep rally and hand holding session for the class misfits and dropouts”.

Now to be fair, he said it wasn’t a total con job, and on occasion an attendee actually went out and generated some real results, but those folks were far and few in between, and those few individuals that did have some success probably could have done what they did without extraordinarily high costs of the program.

So there it is, the confession of an instructor working for one of the real estate gurus. I ultimately went to one or two of these events myself, and in my opinion he was spot on. Totally useless and a huge waste of time, learned nothing that wasn’t available reading any one of a hundred 4.95 books available online from amazon.

Well, upon return from the 4-day Quick Start event, I have to say that I absolutely loved it. I didn’t pay for the event itself (just travel and lodging), though I did spend 2k on some training material. Not too bad, I don’t think.

The 4-day event did have some sales pitches here and there, as can be expected. But, they didn’t push anything terribly hard and mostly left people to their own devices as to whether or not they wanted to do whatever it was they were offering. I would say the event was 80% content and 20% sales, which is actually a bit better than I was expecting.

Overall, I think the information that was presented was extremely valuable, worth far more than the price of the course (which again, I did not have to pay). I am going to put it into practice over the course of the next few months so we will see what happens.

In addition, I have a local mentor to help me along the way. I think that I am in a good position to produce results.

I agree. I spent MUCH more than my fair share on guru courses that got me nowhere. However, what you WILL NEED as a real estate investor, whether you are a NEW or OLD real estate investor = MONEY!

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